Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 9/17/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
As for "abstain" votes on nomination for AfD, it's because there's really no better place for people to say "I think there's something wrong with this article, what should be done?" Just putting {{cleanup}} or {{wikify}} on something won't fix it in a hurry. Putting {{afd}} on it /will/.
I'm in two minds about this. Should we allow the casual use of AfD as a cleanup resource? I think I'd be inclined to regard such use of AfD as borderline bad faith. If someone really thinks an article needs to be cleaned up, *and quickly*, he should just do a quick edit to remove whatever it is that makes him uncomfortable about the article from the current version. This should take a minute or so.
One unfortunate tendency is that people who want something cleaned up expect other people to do it. Thus they become a part of the problem. Wikifying an article or removing something from an article (if that is all that is required) does not require further outside resources. If those who recognize such problems on an article went ahead and did it the cleanup list would be a lot shorter. Someone else going through the same items on the cleanup list may not even recognize what needs to be done.
Articles that need something added are a much bigger problem. My experience lately in Wiktionary has been with people who refuse to cite sources, and who feel that it is the responsibility of those who reject a word to supply the proof for them. For them it is enough proof to say that the word has 250 hits on Google, and it is enough to believe that someone else will wade through all the nonsense blogs to pull out anything of value. I don't doubt that many of these terms would be kept if people did their proper homework; it comes down to a question of whose homework is it.
Ec